Invalid availability value

What is this issue?

availability must be in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder or backorder.

Why Google Merchant Center rejects this

Google only accepts its own values. Anything else gets the product disapproved.

Valid values / expected format

1. ✓in_stock
2. ✓out_of_stock
3. ✓preorder
4. ✓backorder

Fix in StriveFormats

This issue is auto-fixable. Upload your CSV and click Fix Issues to apply all safe corrections at once.

Fix in Excel

1. 1In Excel, click the column letter for the availability column.
2. 2Press Ctrl+H. Type the invalid value in 'Find what' and the correct value in 'Replace with', then click Replace All.
3. 3The accepted values are: in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder, backorder.
4. 4To prevent future errors, add a dropdown: select the column, go to Data > Data Validation, choose 'List', and enter the valid options separated by commas.
5. 5Save as Text (Tab delimited) (*.txt).

Fix in Google Sheets

1. 1In Google Sheets, select the availability column.
2. 2Press Ctrl+H, find the invalid value and replace it with the correct one, then click Replace All.
3. 3Accepted values: in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder, backorder.
4. 4To add a validation dropdown: select the column, go to Data > Data Validation, choose 'Dropdown (from a list)', and enter the valid options.
5. 5Go to File > Download > Tab Separated Values (.tsv), then rename the file to end in .txt.

Prevent it next time

1. ✓Copy-paste allowed values directly from the official template to avoid typos.
2. ✓Use Excel Data Validation or Google Sheets Data Validation to restrict the column to a dropdown of allowed values.
3. ✓Check the platform's official documentation for the current list of allowed values, as they can change.

How StriveFormats detects this

StriveFormats checks the availability column against the exact list of accepted values for Google Merchant Center. The comparison is case-sensitive, so any difference in capitalization or spelling is flagged as an invalid value.